[Ecommerce] NYT ON Spam

[James Love]

For about 5 years we have pushed for this solution to spam, mentioned in
today's NYT editorial on spam.

"By requiring bulk e-mailers to label spam honestly, and by making it easy
for recipients to filter it or choose not to receive it, the government can
go a long way toward preserving e-mail for more important uses."

The key issue here is international cooperation.  We have asked Mozelle
Thompson from the FTC, who is chair of the OECD consumer protection
committee, to put global cooperation of spam regulation on the OECD agenda,
and will be raising this with him at the TACD meetings at the end of October.

Jamie

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/opinion/13FRI2.html


Taking On Junk E-Mail

It will come as no surprise to anyone with an e-mail account that the
scourge of spam has reached near-intolerable levels. One new study estimates
that this year 7.3 billion e-mail messages will be sent each day, and spam —
bulk, commercial e-mail — will make up nearly one-third of it. Increasingly,
opponents of spam are using federal and state law to fight back. This
growing movement is worthwhile, and deserves support from Congress, federal
agencies, state legislatures and the courts.

Spam is popular with direct marketers for obvious reasons. Junk mail
requires U.S. postage, but junk e-mail can be sent almost without cost.
Computer time is cheap, and CD's containing millions of e-mail addresses
sell online for about $150. For recipients, however, spam is far from free.
Businesses report that unwanted e-mail is significantly reducing worker
productivity and overloading computer-system capacity. Individuals are
spending countless hours, both at the office and at home, sifting through
their e-mail queues to weed out spam. Since this is an imperfect science,
e-mail users often lose important, non-junk e-mail in the process.

This month the Telecommunications Research and Action Center and other
consumer groups petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit e-mail
that disguises its commercial intent by using a phony subject line or by
misrepresenting the sender. They are also asking the agency to require
spammers to offer recipients a way to "unsubscribe" — to get themselves
removed from a spammers' list — and to make it illegal to ignore such
requests. These proposed rules fall squarely within the F.T.C.'s mandate and
deserve prompt action.

Other promising anti-spam efforts are under way at the state level.
California, for example, now requires spammers to include, at the start of
the subject header on every piece of junk e-mail, the abbreviation "ADV" —
for advertisement. This makes it reasonably easy for recipients not to open
— or better yet, to set their e-mail filters to keep out — unwanted spam.
Morrison & Foerster, a large San Francisco law firm, is suing one commercial
e-mailer that it says is flouting the law. Washington state, another leader
in the anti-spam cause, has a law on its books making it illegal to use
misleading subject headers. The state attorney general is using that law to
sue spammers who use subject lines like "Payment Past Due" to trick
recipients into opening spam.

Yet spam has some powerful backers. Trade associations representing bulk
e-mailers have so far succeeded in blocking anti-spam bills in Congress, and
they can be counted on to lobby the F.T.C. not to act. Civil liberties
groups have, unfortunately, too often come to the defense of spam on
free-speech grounds. Spam is commercial speech, and as such entitled to a
lower level of protection than other speech. The regulations adopted so far
by the states, and those now pending at the F.T.C., fall well within what is
constitutionally permissible.

According to one projection, spam will increase more than fivefold over the
next four years. At that rate, some experts fear, it could so swamp e-mail
systems that e-mail will become virtually unusable. By requiring bulk
e-mailers to label spam honestly, and by making it easy for recipients to
filter it or choose not to receive it, the government can go a long way
toward preserving e-mail for more important uses.


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James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040





-- 
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James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040


-- 
------
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040